Your Mac seems to be affected by a bug that creates new groups when there are sync conflicts. In these groups, an important file of Ulysses is missing which is why the groups aren’t downloaded. Can you still find the files on other devices (insofar you own other ones)? If so, could you please move them to another group and see if they are synced?

Me:

The syncing issue appears to be across all of my devices. MacBook Pro, iPhone 8+, iPad Pro, iPad Air.

Ulysses:

Since the issue is appearing across all devices, it would be best if you do the following:

Create new groups in Ulysses’ library

Go to the menu “File” › “Browse Backups…” and select a date when the groups were still synced

Drag the content from the backups to the new groups in the main window

So that’s what I did. Everything seems to be in order. I think I will start a redundant weekly plaintext backup in Dropbox or Devonthink to be extra double sure, though.

I’m having issues with Ulysses sync again on my MacBook Pro. Changes that I make on my other devices aren’t syncing to my MacBook. All other apps on my MacBook sync with no problem which tells me that this is a Ulysses problem and not iCloud. This isn’t the first time I’ve had this problem on my MacBook.

Ulysses support has been no help with this issue. I’ve found that disabling and enabling iCloud sync in Ulysses settings or starting a new sheet forces a sync. It’s a work around but doesn’t give me feeling of confidence with Ulysses sync.

Now I’m sorry that I just renewed my subscription. I’m going to follow the lead of @tjluoma and move to Bear.

Thank you for the link. I’ve contacted Ulysses support with this issue in the past. They were unable to resolve it for me so regardless of whether the issue is Ulysses or iCloud I can’t trust the syncing of my Ulysses sheets.

Partially because the blending of folders and tags seems like it combines the best of Ulysses and Bear … and I could stop using Bear as well.

I made the switch from a Ulysses/Bear combo to iA Writer. Since you mention tags specifically I’ll note that one tag-related feature in Bear that iA Writer does not implement is the ability to nest tags (a “work” tag with separate tags within it for individual projects, for instance). That’s one that I really miss.